Electric Scooter Offers Way To Beat The Gas Pump Blues

The Cape Cod Chronicle had an inside track to getting a Vectrix Motorcycle to ride and review. One of their employees was married to the senior product manager for Vectrix. Anyway, they got an opportunity to ride one around for quite awhile.

"A person riding a Vectrix scooter is a novelty. Motorcycle enthusiasts—and there are more out there than you might imagine—are the most curious...." I've experienced this with my own electric motorcycle (not a Vectrix). Regularly people pull up next to me in traffic, do a double take of my motorcycle, roll down the window, and start asking questions like... "How fast can it go? How far can it go on a charge? How long does it take to charge the batteries? How much does it cost? ..." Yup, I get those questions too.

The article goes into the cost savings: Here on Cape Cod, residential electric rates are closer to 12.5 cents, so the real cost per mile is a fraction of a cent higher than their advertised cost of a penny per mile. By comparison, a fuel-efficient gas-powered scooter might get 47 mpg, yielding a cost per mile of around 9.3 cents—a number that will go up with gas prices. In case you’re curious, the cost per mile for a fuel-efficient 29 mpg compact car is about 15 cents. Those numbers are based on gasoline sold at $4.39 a gallon, and don’t take into account the maintenance costs of any of the vehicles.

The author of the article was also a newbie to motorcycling and lists several new experiences and things you have to be aware of: Weather forecasts, Insects, Solar glare, Potholes, Water sprayed on the pavement, Loose dogs, Coffee (no cup holders)

They seem to like it but this is really just an introductory article.

Article Reference: 

Electric Scooter Offers Way To Beat The Gas Pump Blues

http://www.vectrix.com/portal/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrix

http://visforvoltage.org/forums/vectrix

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Open Road: Fuel savings entices some to try motorcycles

"Since gas went over $3.50 ... a lot of people are looking for 50 cc scooters,...Pretty much everyone these days wants to use them for daily driving." Motorcycle and scooter dealers - and riders - across the Rio Grande Valley say more and more shoppers are looking for fuel-efficient bikes to get them to work.

I know from my experience this is true. one day while at the gas station filling my Honda Rebel 250, this guy with a big truck drives up. He looked at me and asked how little it took me to fill up the tank on my motorcycle. Well, 8 dollars, and he goes on to complain that it takes $150 to fill his truck etc... I didn't mention to him my other motorcycle is electric and ends up costing even less to ride for my daily commute...

So, yeah, get scooters or motorcycles to save cost. Please, do.

The article suggests a fuel efficient motorcycle can pay for itself pretty quickly. Here's the way it works:-

Take a "car" which gets 15 miles/gallon versus a Ninja 250cc which gets 67.5 miles/gallon. You can go 4 1/2 times further per gallon of gas with the motorcycle than the car, or cover the same distance with 22.222% of the cost. Per mile you ride such a motorcycle versus the "steel cage" (car) you're saving 77% of the fuel cost, and for some commutes that fuel cost savings could add up to the $3700 purchase price of the motorcycle.

e.g. 10,000 miles takes 666.666 gallons in a 15 mile/gallon vehicle (no kidding) and at $4 per gallon costs $2666.666 per year for fuel.

10,000 miles takes 148.148148 gallons in a 67.5 mile/gallon vehicle and at $4 per gallon costs $592.295295 per year for fuel.

If you ride 10,000 miles per year you'd save $2074.06 per year in fuel costs riding the motorcycle over driving the car.

There is a national organization, Ride To Work, which is promoting the use of motorcycles for commutes because of the fuel/cost savings. While driving the highways it's apparent that most cars are driven by solo drivers, and it makes a lot of sense to encourage solo-driver-vehicles a.k.a. Motorcycles as an acknowledgment of this factoid of modern life.

Article Reference: 

Open Road: Fuel savings entices some to try motorcycles

Ride To Work

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America's Best Places For Alternative Energy

The "cubic mile of oil"--a metric roughly equivalent to the amount of oil consumed worldwide each year--is frequently used to explain the challenge facing solar, wind, geothermal and biomass power. What would it take to replace the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil? The best location for specific technologies varies, and some areas are best for one technology or another. Some places are windy, others sunny, the wind varies from season to season, and geothermal power is easily tapped only in volcanic regions.

The Texas panhandle was recently highlighted by oilman T. Boone Pickens. But that's not the only place where the wind blows strong, it just happens to be one which Mr. Pickens is fond of.

The deserts of the U.S. Southwest are great places for solar power. The most insolated place in the country is Inyokern in southern California. Ensconced on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Inyokern covers 11 square miles of Kern County in the dust-choked Mojave Desert. Those 11 square miles receive more solar insolation annually than any other comparably sized locale in North America. FPL Energy recently announced plans to build a massive 2,000-acre solar power plant in the area called the Beacon Solar Energy Project.

Article Reference: 

America's Best Places For Alternative Energy

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Ausra Goes Viva Las Vegas with Solar Thermal Power Factory

"Ausra develops and deploys utility-scale solar thermal power technology to serve global electricity needs in a dependable, market-competitive, environmentally responsible manner....Ausra's core technology, the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar collector and steam generation system, was originally conceived in the early 1990s at Sydney University. It was first commercialized by Solar Heat and Power Pty Ltd. in 2004 in Australia and is now being refined and built at large scale by Ausra around the world." They have opened a production plant in Las Vegas. At the plant they will produce reflectors, absorber tubes and other key components they use to build solar thermal power plants. They plan to service the "rapidly growing Southwestern solar power industry".. the Southwest U.S. has a lot of sunlight, a lot of heat, and very few people.

In November 2007, Ausra and California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)announced a power purchase agreement for a 177-megawatt solar thermal power plant to be built in central California. The power plant will generate enough electricity to power more than 120,000 homes.

The new factory will make solar field equipment for the PG&E project,for other power projects throughout the American Southwest, and for Ausra's process steam customers, who are adopting solar thermal power to lower their fuel costs and emissions in their operations, including food processing, enhanced oil recovery and refining, and pulp and paper manufacturing. At full capacity, it will annually produce more than 700 megawatts of solar collectors – enough to power nearly half a million homes, and keep 1,400 construction workers employed building solar power plants.

The technology works by focusing sunlight using a zillion reflectors. The light is focused on a central heat collector that vaporises water, using the steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. The steam is recollected as water again to form a closed loop.

They publish a series of reports: http://www.ausra.com/technology/reports.html

Article Reference: 

Ausra Goes Viva Las Vegas with Solar Thermal Power Factory

http://www.ausra.com/

Ausra Opens First U.S. Solar Thermal Power Factory

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GM to build world's biggest rooftop solar station in Spain

General Motors, not exactly known for environmental cleanliness.. well.. they apparently have been making BIG investments in solar power. The current bit of news is a rooftop solar power plant they are planning to build onto the roof of a factory in Spain. It is a 10 megawatt installation and will apparently provide more power than required by the plant, because they intend to sell some power to the local power company. The installation will cover about 2,000,000 square feet of the rooftop. The plant assembles more than 480,000 vehicles per year.

GM currently has two of the largest solar power installations in the United States on the roofs of its Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, California parts warehouses.

Rooftops are prime territory to install solar power systems. The rooftop already exists meaning the solar power installation does not consume land in its own right. Instead a rooftop solar power installation is reusing land that is already being used.

This is so interesting ... a roof of a single factory has enough square footage to install a 10 megawatt solar power plant. So just think for a moment, how many factories and office buildings and warehouses are existing.. how many square feet of rooftop there is, and how much electricity could be generated from the sun if that otherwise empty rooftop space was repurposed to solar energy?

If a company as environmentally dense as GM can do it, then why not all others?

The problem with the energy crisis the world is facing right now is the "energy" driving our society is coming from a limited resource. Energy can come from many sources some of which are nigh on limitless, such as the sun or wind. There would not be an energy crisis if the energy system were based on these nearly limitless resources.

I'm carefully saying "nearly limitless" because scientists say the Sun will burn out several billion years into the future. Uh, that's limitless enough for me, how about you?

Links: 

GM to build world's biggest rooftop solar station in Spain

Links: 

http://www.clairvoyantenergy.com/

External Media

Man falls in love with his Xingyue enclosed scooter

"If I drive between 30 and 40, I'll get 120 mpg. If I drive between 40 and 50, I'll get 80-90 mpg." This guy is owning a three wheeled scooter that has a semi-enclosed cabin. The scooter is made by a Chinese company, Xingyue. The video shows the scooter tilting during turns and it looks really cool. It uses a 150cc gas motor.

Article Reference: 

Man falls in love with his Xingyue enclosed scooter

Local man loves his Chinese-made scooter

http://en.xingyueshen.com/product_gd.php?id3=22#pic

http://en.xingyueshen.com/

http://www.xingyue.us/

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Solar Energy: Saved by the Sun

Solar Energy: Saved by the Sun is a PBS documentary (a Nova episode) covering the solar energy industry, developments in solar technology, and generally presenting solar energy in a very positive and with a, uh, bright future. The documentary doesn't go into great depth but has great information in it. Interviewees include two members of the German Parliament, the Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Amory Lovins, several people who have installed solar systems in their houses, farms or businesses.

In Germany there are deep incentives for solar and wind power. This has led to massive growth of industries to build these technology, and massive installation of these technologies. Germany passed a law, as has many countries, to set a target for 20% renewable by 2020. However it appears Germany may well exceed this target. A pig farmer was interviewed, who has installed a massive 1 MW solar array on his farm. It cost $5 mil investment, earns very significant revenue every year, but they claimed that what made it work was the incentives. Without the guarantees in the incentive program the banks would not have lent the required money.

Which leads to a question of what will happen if/when the incentive program ceases.

A theme returned to over and over is a key flaw in solar or wind power is they don't produce electricity when the sun is down, or the wind is not blowing. There aren't battery systems which can store sufficient power to drive a whole city for any length of time. Therefore the essential feature of electricity is it cannot be stored. Electricity which can't be stored is not much use, further at night when the sun isn't shining how would we power our houses.

This leads to a situation where solar powered houses are still tied to the grid, so that they can draw on the grid when the sun isn't shining. You might think, oh, that's cheating. Well... It's pragmatic is what it is. Some solar advocates are purists, nothing but solar power for them thank you very much. However that means they require batteries to store their power to have lights when the sun doesn't shine. The battery pack raises cost and complexity of their systems. And, if the house is grid-tied then the grid becomes the battery pack to store electricity.

A point presented in several ways throughout the documentary is that it is when the sun is the hottest that electricity demand is highest. Because American houses are misdesigned and heat up badly when it's hot (they could be designed to be less affected by heat) American's learned response is to crank up the air conditioner. Cranked up air conditioners are what cause the steep power demand during the day. Hence solar power can be what provides peak power during the day when the power is most needed.

Rather than it being a flaw that solar panels only produce when the sun is shining, looked at from another angle it is a blessing that solar panels operate when their power is most needed.

AASIN: 

NOVA: Solar Energy - Saved by the Sun